cillam
Community Member
Hello i would like to introduce myself and go over my reefing journey so far.
I had a 55 gallon fresh water tank around 12 years ago and learnt a lot of painful mistakes regarding the nitrogen cycle, and not overstocking a bunch of fish into a newly set up tank, but i always thought it would be cool to set up a reef tank one day. I got rid of the fresh water tank around 5 years ago.
Recently I was given a 60 gallon (36 wide x 18 deep x 22 high) display tank, stand, halide light & hood along with a 20 gallon sump tank which has a build in protein skimmer( with no pump), return pump and heater, so i thought awesome lets build a salt water setup and have a reef, it should be cheap as i have everything i need or so i thought.
Well i started setting up the tank in early June, bought around 40lb of dry rock for around $100, a bag of ocean direct live sand, a bottle of nitrifying bacteria, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, calcium, phosphate, magnesium, alkalinity, and copper test kits along with a digital tester which shows TDS, salinity PH and temperature, along with an RODI system and salt. After spending way too much on plumbing to get the sump plumbed into the main display tank i went to town setting up my tank and waiting for it to cycle. after a few days i realized a didn't add any ammonia, so i bought a bottle from Ace hardware, and started dosing, i may have gone a little over board as after cycling my nitrates were very high and i am still struggling to get them down fortunately now i am at around 20 PPM, but would like to get them between 5 to 10.
a bought a used 10 gallon tank, small water heater and air pump along with copper power and Prazipro and followed the 80/20 videos from BRS and started quarantining two clown fish i got from Petco. my tank was taking too long (in my mind) to cycle, so i read the alk may be low and to add some baking soda, well i thought i did but found out it was baking powder, so did around an 80% change. After the tank cycled i finally got my clown fish in the display tank after they were in the 10 gallon for around a month.
Even though i was given a halide lamp with hood i wanted to have something that did not throw off as much heat or use as much power and didn't want to hang it from the ceiling, so i bought a 42watt LED strip light from amazon with full spectrum and blue light sold as a reef light.
I got a small cleanup crew of some hermit crabs and different types of snails, and spent around $300 on small beginner coral frags, but noticed they are not growing too fast. but are growing. so looking at the PH of my tank it would go no higher than 7.9 but sometimes would go as low as 7.6 so after watching more video's i bought a CO2 scrubber and connected it to the venturi of the protein skimmer, which fixed my PH issue, i am now hovering between 8.25 & 8.4. I have been broadcast feeding my coral with the phyto & Zooplankten from Seachem along with the trace elements & ammino acids around every 2-3 days, i have been closely monitoring my alk, calcium, nitrate, & phosphates, i bought a refractometer to better check the salinity as i didn't trust the digital reader, which was off by about 5 PPT (digital reader was showing 35 PPT, calibrated refractometer was showing 40 PPT), I then bought a ATO as i am evaporating around 2/3 to 3/4 of a gallon a day and quickly got tired of dumping in almost a gallon a day, and didn't like the salinity swings. I was doing around 15% water changes every week, i have now reduced this to 20% every two weeks, so but still minimal growth.
After looking up more stuff on lighting i quickly realized that my 42 watt LED lights is definitely not enough for my coral to properly thrive. so i am now looking into buying Noo-Psyche K7 Pro III
Between plumbing, rock, sand, test kits, coral, CUC, skimmer pump, QT tank and equipment, medication, alk, calcium, trace elements, testing equipment, etc. i have probably spent around $850-1000 on this free tank that i thought would be cheap to set up. and now looking at another $200 for lighting as i screwed up the first time with the strip light.
If i could do it all again, i still would, but i would make sure i spent more money on the initial investment, instead of trying to cheap out.
All in all i am enjoying this hobby. Looking forward to after Christmas when i can buy more fish and coral.
I had a 55 gallon fresh water tank around 12 years ago and learnt a lot of painful mistakes regarding the nitrogen cycle, and not overstocking a bunch of fish into a newly set up tank, but i always thought it would be cool to set up a reef tank one day. I got rid of the fresh water tank around 5 years ago.
Recently I was given a 60 gallon (36 wide x 18 deep x 22 high) display tank, stand, halide light & hood along with a 20 gallon sump tank which has a build in protein skimmer( with no pump), return pump and heater, so i thought awesome lets build a salt water setup and have a reef, it should be cheap as i have everything i need or so i thought.
Well i started setting up the tank in early June, bought around 40lb of dry rock for around $100, a bag of ocean direct live sand, a bottle of nitrifying bacteria, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, calcium, phosphate, magnesium, alkalinity, and copper test kits along with a digital tester which shows TDS, salinity PH and temperature, along with an RODI system and salt. After spending way too much on plumbing to get the sump plumbed into the main display tank i went to town setting up my tank and waiting for it to cycle. after a few days i realized a didn't add any ammonia, so i bought a bottle from Ace hardware, and started dosing, i may have gone a little over board as after cycling my nitrates were very high and i am still struggling to get them down fortunately now i am at around 20 PPM, but would like to get them between 5 to 10.
a bought a used 10 gallon tank, small water heater and air pump along with copper power and Prazipro and followed the 80/20 videos from BRS and started quarantining two clown fish i got from Petco. my tank was taking too long (in my mind) to cycle, so i read the alk may be low and to add some baking soda, well i thought i did but found out it was baking powder, so did around an 80% change. After the tank cycled i finally got my clown fish in the display tank after they were in the 10 gallon for around a month.
Even though i was given a halide lamp with hood i wanted to have something that did not throw off as much heat or use as much power and didn't want to hang it from the ceiling, so i bought a 42watt LED strip light from amazon with full spectrum and blue light sold as a reef light.
I got a small cleanup crew of some hermit crabs and different types of snails, and spent around $300 on small beginner coral frags, but noticed they are not growing too fast. but are growing. so looking at the PH of my tank it would go no higher than 7.9 but sometimes would go as low as 7.6 so after watching more video's i bought a CO2 scrubber and connected it to the venturi of the protein skimmer, which fixed my PH issue, i am now hovering between 8.25 & 8.4. I have been broadcast feeding my coral with the phyto & Zooplankten from Seachem along with the trace elements & ammino acids around every 2-3 days, i have been closely monitoring my alk, calcium, nitrate, & phosphates, i bought a refractometer to better check the salinity as i didn't trust the digital reader, which was off by about 5 PPT (digital reader was showing 35 PPT, calibrated refractometer was showing 40 PPT), I then bought a ATO as i am evaporating around 2/3 to 3/4 of a gallon a day and quickly got tired of dumping in almost a gallon a day, and didn't like the salinity swings. I was doing around 15% water changes every week, i have now reduced this to 20% every two weeks, so but still minimal growth.
After looking up more stuff on lighting i quickly realized that my 42 watt LED lights is definitely not enough for my coral to properly thrive. so i am now looking into buying Noo-Psyche K7 Pro III
Between plumbing, rock, sand, test kits, coral, CUC, skimmer pump, QT tank and equipment, medication, alk, calcium, trace elements, testing equipment, etc. i have probably spent around $850-1000 on this free tank that i thought would be cheap to set up. and now looking at another $200 for lighting as i screwed up the first time with the strip light.
If i could do it all again, i still would, but i would make sure i spent more money on the initial investment, instead of trying to cheap out.
All in all i am enjoying this hobby. Looking forward to after Christmas when i can buy more fish and coral.
